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September 6, 2006

BehindTheMedspeak: 'Does your wind instrument threaten your health?'

Hlijhlihijhli_1

Got your attention, huh?

Me too, even though the kazoo is the only wind instrument I've ever played.

But I digress.

Yesterday's Washington Post Health section story by Jennifer Huget featured Massachusetts dentist — and accomplished clarinetist — Dr. Lorenzo Lepore's company, MaestroMD.

Long story short: "Laboratory studies have proved that dangerous bacteria can survive and grow inside a musical wind instrument."

Dr. Lepore's company sends you a shipping kit for your instrument; you send it to them and in 10 business days your instrument is returned, sterilized and "ready to be safely played."

Prices range from $49.99 for a piccolo to $319.99 for a tuba.

Here's the Post article.

    Tune In to a New Worry?

    Massachusetts dentist and musician Lorenzo Lepore had an aha moment after a school band teacher asked how to make a sick student's wind instrument safe to issue to another student. Just sterilize it the same way you do other instruments, Lepore said. When the teacher replied that the school sterilized none of the instruments, Lepore heard opportunity's bugle call. The result: a service he calls MaestroMD.

    "Does your wind instrument threaten your health?" reads the pitch at www.maestromd.com. "Laboratory studies have proved that dangerous bacteria can survive and grow inside a musical wind instrument." Those studies — on a small number of instruments — were commissioned by Lepore's company.

    The business is aimed mostly at school systems — the first to get the treatment (gratis) are the schools in Lepore's hometown of Medford, Mass. — but worrywart parents can also sign up to have a single flute or trumpet sanitized. The company supplies prepaid shipping boxes to send instruments to a sterilization facility where the items, still in their cases, are infiltrated with ethylene oxide gas, long used to sterilize medical and dental instruments. The average cost is about $50 to $90 per item, though a tuba will cost you $319; the germ-free instruments are shipped back within 10 days.

    Play That Again: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention knows of no disease outbreak tied to wind instruments. John Bradley, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, says that even if disease-causing bacteria could survive the usual summer gap between student rentals (which he considers unlikely), the pathogens associated with such illnesses as staph and strep infections, meningitis and tuberculosis aren't likely to do harm if encountered through a wind instrument.

    On a Local Note: Gaithersburg-based Victor Litz Music Center, which rents about 1,500 band instruments each school year, swabs out its wind instruments during the summer and cleans mouthpieces with a germicide called Sterisol, says assistant manager Robby Rule. "I have high confidence in the instruments," he says.

September 6, 2006 at 02:01 PM | Permalink


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Comments

I think more people need to vist this company's web site before judgeing them. First off according to thier web page, independent studies have been done and have found that the bacteria that causes strep and even tuberculosis have survived in the instrument.

Also you should take a look at the process. the instrument is sent in your case, in a special wrapping and the gas is so small it pass through and kills the bacteria without affecting your instrument's fine tuneing. It's basically the same way hospitals sterilize anything that goes into a persons body durring surgery.

Finnally if you all ready the web site u'd understand that the idea is to sterilize your instrument after buying it new or used (even new instruments are tested before being sold), letting a friend borrow it, or what about if you got strep? wouldn't you want to send it in to get sterilizsed before using it again?

Take a good look at thier web site b4 casting judgement on them.

Posted by: Nicholas | Sep 14, 2006 3:40:19 PM

I played the trombone, briefly, and always hated the odd smell carried in the mouthpiece. Back to piano where I made the orchestra director (OK, my parents did) buy some accompaniement music.

Scot Joplin was fine.

Now, I want to learn to play the accordian. But what mold I will squeeze out from the bellows.....

Posted by: Mb | Sep 6, 2006 6:52:22 PM

As a former clarinet player, I can attest to the fact that gross junk accumulates in those mouthpieces if you don't clean them. We had cleaning brushes that looked similar to a bottle brush or a cake-tip-decorator cleaning brush but were geared towards clarinet mouthpieces.

But there is a reed between you and where the gunk accumulates, so I can't see how even kids who didn't clean their instruments often would come into contact with said gunk - unless you licked it off or something.

I'm sure the reed and the constant wetting of the reed with saliva to keep it moist enhances and engenders said junk. But it's like most things in life...it can be gross without being contagious.

What I don't understand about the sterilization - as soon as an instrument is out of the sterilized chambers, it is once again housing bacteria. (Similar to as soon as you get a test tube out of an autoclave and touch it, it is no longer technically "sterile.")

(I always knew something was wrong with me, I just never knew I could blame it on my wind instrument.) ;)

Posted by: Clarinetist (Or Claurinetist if you prefer) ;) | Sep 6, 2006 6:11:58 PM

I don't know about that. It seems to me that if the little hooligans would swab their instruments out after playing them once in a while it might cut down on some of the "dangerous bacteria" teeming around in the old flugelhorn, there. I suppose it's the mouthpiece they're really concerned with, but I never heard of anybody coming down with mumps or rabies after using someone else's bassoon.

All I know is, I'll be damned if I'm going to let someone gas my Haynes or Powell or Brannen-Cooper just so it can be declared sterile. It might be perfectly safe, but on a keyed wind instrument like flute, clarinet, etc., in order to achieve a good sound, especially in rapid passages, the pads of each key have to fit perfectly air tight over the tone holes, and how do I know that killing off all my precious germs isn't going to render it full of leaks? I'll just continue to let my instrument be a hotbed of disease, and play blithely on.

Posted by: Flautist | Sep 6, 2006 4:16:33 PM

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